247 Days to Go: Sleepover and Sweets

Hello Everyone !

Its been a while, somehow I never got round to writing about the last meeting we had as Unit 8. . .

The last meeting was at Stokenchurch and was only a one day event, when I get hold of some photos of the day I will hopefully post them, but for now, I'd like to show you what happened when we all united back at the Quarries campsite in Milton Keynes. I'll keep it brief.

Every unit attending the Jamboree has to present and organise an activity relevant to their culture and background, we have so far put quite a bit of thought into what we want to do so began Saturday morning testing out our ideas. Bearing in mind that Stoke Mandeville, in Bucks, was the birth place of the Paralympic Games, we want to bring some paralympic sports all the way to Japan !

Leader Stuart, had kindly researched 4 different paralympic events, and brought along the equipment for us to have a go at and work out which will be best to take to the Jamboree. We all gave it a go, with some fairly varied results . . .

Sitting Volleyball wasn't too hard

Goal ball, blindfolded with a bell in the balls

Blind Football

This was probably the hardest of the sports

Things got quite heated

Boccia, essentially seated boules

After trying out the sports, we moved on to the second part of our task as a unit for the Jamboree. We have to make and give out small amounts of food to again, reflect the culture and area we are from. At our last meeting, we did a lot of brainstorming and came up with the idea to make sweets and chocolates like those from Roald Dhal stories; Roald Dhal lived and wrote in Great Missenden which, obviously, is in Bucks.

Under the careful guidance of head chef Stuart, we attempted to make 'Candy Coated Pencils for Sucking in Class', or in our case 'Candy Coated Chopsticks for Eating Before Lunch'. To say things got messy is an understatement, however, some of us did manage to make something vaguely similar to that in the recipe.

'Just follow the recipe Matt !'

We went for green orange flavored candy

Attempting to cover our chopsticks

Concentration was key

They weren't the easiest things to make

Candy Coated Pencils for Sucking in Class

Once again, we had a mixture of Sushi and sausage rolls for lunch, sat around Cathy's 'Imaginary table'.

After lunch, we were lucky enough to be given three presentations from three students at the University of Buckingham. Miki, who we had already met at our July meeting, gave a really interesting presentation about daily life in Japan, filling us in about taking shoes off when entering a guests house and loads of other small features of Japanese culture. We were then told about 'Kawaii' culture, essentially Hello Kitty and photo-booths, which literally means 'Cute'. Our final visitor told us more about food traditions in Japan, especially making sure you say 'Itadakimasu' before and after eating. Luckily for me, and I'm pretty sure many of the other guys in the unit, its considered polite to clear your plate and ask for more, signifying you have enjoyed the meal !

We then had a little wonder around the campsite to get some fresh air and after taking a couple of selfies, headed back to the hut to play some more sitting volley ball. Some of the unit formed a little study group, catching up on homework and revising whilst myself , Grace and Amber did cartwheels and hurdled the volley ball net, as you can tell, we are a very serious and academically dedicated group . . .

Its come to my attention that all I ever seem to do on training weekends is eat, which is just about all we did for the next two hours. Stuart once again led the marathon effort of cooking for 30 people and delivered us a great meal of spag bol and stir fry, followed by apple crumble. The pictures don't quite do dinner justice, it tasted better than it looks.

Itadakimasu

Home made apple crumble 

Another thing we have to do out in Japan is to have something to perform at campfires and when visiting other units. Chris Field took charge of organising us into some sort of musical arrangement, but to be honest, we sounded more like a group of strangled cats than a choir. I would post the video but its far to embarrassing for everyone involved, however it can't be denied that we had a laugh trying to sing in some sort of rhythm as a group.

Chris conducting the Unit 8 Choir

Saturday finished with us playing various games and listening to an unusual amount of George Ezra for some reason. We all slept on the floor in the hut and attempted to get a decent nights sleep. . .

As per usual, we started Sunday morning with a cooked breakfast; eggs, bacon, beans and sausages always go down well.

We had to leave the hut by 9 on Sunday, so it was only 10 by the time we had built another set of A Frames for racing. Unfortunately, the weather got progressively worse throughout the morning so we hadn't raced for too long before we lost all feeling in our fingers and were absolutely drenched.

I could not feel my hands by this point

Because of the wet and cold weather, we decided to cut the day short, finishing off by trying to warm up drinking hot chocolate and receiving a Christmas tag telling us who we had for Secret Santa. 

Once again, another great weekend with people I can firmly call my friends, despite the weather we all had a pretty enjoyable time !

Thanks for reading

Lauren x

308 Days to go: Braidwood Regatta

Hello Everybody

This weekend I went to the annual Braidwood Regatta with Unit 8 and once again it was a fantastic weekend. 

Having done some research, I've discovered that most people prefer looking at pictures on my blog than reading, so enjoy !

Most of us arrived on Friday evening and attempted to put our tents up, in the dark, in a very small area. 

Three's a crowd ?

The mess tent from the Sweden Jamboree

We also got given our Unit 8 personalised hoodies ! For some reason, when I ordered mine I decided to get a medium, which was definitely the wrong idea, it practically drowns me...

It's almost a dress

After the horrendous thunder and lighting storm on Friday, we were all a bit sleepy on Saturday morning, but a hearty breakfast of eggs and bacon rolls woke us up .

My eggs were pretty good

Life does not get any better

We all wore our brand new hoodies for flag break and were lucky enough to meet the Chief Commissioner of England, Tim Kidd. After a quick photo, the event was opened and the 2014 Braidwood Regatta began.

Chief Commissioner of England- Tim Kidd

For those of you that are unfamiliar, as I was at first, with what the Braidwood Regatta is, let me explain. 

Basically, teams of cubs, scouts, explorers, Network and leaders, build bottomless boats out of cardboard, wood, bamboo and other light materials and race them around a course. The fastest team in each category wins !

Unit 8 entered three boats into the race, and we began building them on Saturday morning.

My group decided on the well known (?) pentagon boat design, with the hope we wouldn't have to turn the actual boat round corners, just turn the runners. 

Building the frame

Painting 

Testing our construction

Promoting the Jamboree

We named our team 'The Flying Cranes' to stick with the Japanese theme and the other team built a sushi inspired boat, calling themselves the Salmon Rollerz.

In it to win it !

The Salmon Rollerz

In the afternoon, we went out in groups to do the incident hike (not to be confused with an Indecent Hike). This meant we followed a plotted route round the local area doing small tasks along the way , earning points which, combined with our time, would contribute to our over all ranking.

One base was performing CPR on Annie the dummy

We tried . . .

Once we returned to the campsite, we were handed the task to build the campfire for the beavers to sing round after their 'Pirate Party'. 

The fire did get better !

In the evening, after a delicious dinner of curry, fajitas, stir fry and spag bol, we went to the explorer party. It started off great and we were all having a really fun time until there was a small incident involving pushing, falling off chairs, drinks spilling and sound systems turning off. Lets just say memories were made ...

Partaaaaay 

On Sunday morning we carried on building our boats and started looking at the catalogue containing the kit we will be getting ready for Japan, it was all very exciting !

Kit for the cool kidz

Round our ever present campfire

For lunch we had sushi, which is fast becoming one of my favorite foods, and a huge amount of banana cake.   

Another food shot :/

Then it was time for the much anticipated race! My team won our race, but sadly didn't qualify for the finals, which was probably just as well because we nearly completely destroyed our boat round the course. Regardless of the outcome, we had so much fun hurtling round the field.

The Flamin' Cranes

With our Pitstop girls

Mid boat race

Our boat was falling apart

Taking the lead

Stuart collecting our boat parts

The Salmon Rollerz were similarly fated in their race, with their boat splitting into two halfway through the race.

The Salmon Rollerz

The leaders where slightly more successful, winning the best design in their group and coming third (I think) in their race.

Oragami man and his mates

After striking camp, there wasn't much more to do than say our farewells, and start looking forward to our next meeting in October.

A Sea of Blue

As I say every time, I had such a great time with the unit and cant wait to see everyone again. As a unit we have decided that Braidwood Regatta next year will be our first reunion after Jamboree which is even more exciting as it means less than a year until we go !

Thanks for reading :)

Lauren 

P.S Our Quiz last weekend went very well. Thank you to everyone who came or supported us, we made an excellent £1400 from the evening ! We are still fund raising but we only have another £3500 to go, any help would be much appreciated.

337 Days to Go: Friendship Bracelets and Update

Hello Everybody 

Long time no see in terms of blog posts , but I'm back and ready to update you on the most recent Jamboree related goings on ! 

First of all .... LESS THAN A YEAR TO JAPAN ! 

This time next year the 23rd World Scout Jamboree will be over and myself and the 30,000 other participants would have returned from, hopefully, the most exciting couple of weeks ever ! The countdown has begun and the pressure is on to raise our funds and organise our Unit .

Secondly, group fundraising for Chiltern North is going well and should hopefully be complete by Christmas. Recently, a couple of members of the group ( Amber, Hadley and Matthew) did bag packing at the Co-op in Hazlemere and raised an incredible £857.79 ! Thank you to anyone who happened to be at the Co-op on Friday , your generosity is much appreciated.

A successful day bag packing 

Our quiz night is fast approaching and we are hoping to raise a large portion of our funds through this event.

We should be running the Santa float at Christmas as well as multiple Bag packing dates in the next couple of months .

My personal fundraising has slowed down over the holidays, but I have been busy making friendship bracelets to raise money. If you'd like to support me , they are £1.50 and I can make them in other colours if requested, available from September.

Adjustable Size 

Multi-Coloured , Dark Blue, Sky Blue 

That's all for now, sorry for the long break, I was in Italy on summer expedition with explorers at the start of the Holidays and have been busy boating since then.

Have a good rest of summer ! 

Thanks for reading :)

393 Days to go : June Weekend

Hello everybody

Last weekend, I met up with Unit 8 for the 3rd time, for a weekend camp at Braidwood, near Chesham. Unlike the last camp we had,  it was hot and sunny the whole time and I can safely say it was one of the best meetings we've had so far. The whole weekend was pretty relaxed and the weather helped us all get used to the climate in Japan , although it will be much much hotter and more humid out there. This is what we got up to...

When we are out in Japan, we will be in patrols of 9, with a Patrol Leader and Assistant Patrol Leader, their job is to keep everyone together when we are moving around. Since the last camp, the leaders decided these patrols and we were placed in them for the setting up of our dining shelters and for most of  the weekends' activities. Once in our patrols we had to come up with a patrol name and decorate Tee-shirts for us to wear ready for the afternoons' rounders and ultimate frisbee matches. My patrol was aptly names the 'Ginger Ninjas' due to 2 of us being of a more orange shade of hair colour.

Decorating our patrol shirts

I drew 8 of these Ninjas ! 

Ginger Ninjas 

Having done this, we were presented with 'Japan in a box' by Paul Rawlings, part of the organising team. One each for the 75 UK units, had been sent over from Japan a couple of months a go to help spread news of the Jamboree to people not involved in it. In the box there was a collection of traditional Japanese items, such as masks, koi fish kites and 'happy jackets', as well as a huge pack of sheets with ideas for games and activities to be used if running an evening for a beaver, cub or scout troop.

 In our patrols, we had to come up with a plan for an evening session for a group of beavers, cubs or scouts aimed at introducing the idea of the Jamboree and inspiring the culture of Japan. Our patrol's plan included crab football with a blow up globe, oragami waterballoons and move-the-malteaser-with-chopsticks.

Japan in a box

Trying on happy jackets

After 'Japan in a box' and lunch (which sadly, I didn't get a picture of) we embarked on a highly competitive game of rounders against the opposing patrols followed by a riveting game of ultimate frisbee. The Ginger Ninjas reigned victorious , winning both matches despite many balls-in-stomachs and tumbles to the ground.

In patrols, we then went on to build fires so as to backwoods cook our dinners. I must say, our fire was pretty impressive and allowed us to have cheese stuffed mushrooms, courtesy of my fellow ginger Matt, and peppers and fried burgers.

Despite the general knowledge that backwoods cooking involves wrapping food in tinfoil and placing it directly into the embers of the fire, we mixed things up a bit; George and myself used the metal door mat from outside the girls toilets as a very effective grill. We must have started a trend because I saw far fewer metal door mats around the site from then on...

The Ginger Ninja's fire

Making dinner

Spot the door mat 

We finished the evening with a huge campfire and singing, all in all , it was a fantastic first day.

The more pallets the better 

The next morning began with a lovely thought of the day from Chris, quoting Beyonce at 7am  which really got me going. This was swiftly followed by a breakfast consisting of bacon, eggs, sausages and beans.

Because we were allowed to camp on the site for free, as with the Quarries camp, we had to some site maintenance. This time it was less clearing rocks and more clearing leaves, which I must say was a lot more pleasant and slightly less draining.

Sweeping the leaves

We were then lucky enough to meet a man named Gavin and his adorable daughter May, who lived in Japan for a period of time whilst he was an English teacher. First of all he told us a bit about the key places to visit in Tokyo, the food and drink, and simple cultural etiquette. As well as telling us some really interesting facts about Japanese culture, he dispelled any of our worries about doing home hospitality.

Having one of our leaders as a professional chef means our lunches are often of a fairly high standard, so on Sunday we had delicious burgers and sausages in rolls, cheese pasties, fruit and chocolate bars.

Lunch time

Seeing that Stuart had a volleyball, a Wendover explorer unit had a volleyball net and me being the competitive person I am, in the afternoon, I organised a unit v unit volley ball tournament, which, sadly we lost, but was still great fun. Bearing in mind the scorching temperatures and our very limited practice, the score wasn't too awful.

So to round things off, here is a picture of Charlie the dog wearing a ninja mask.

The weekend was again, so much fun and now we have Patrols, friendships are even stronger. Our next meeting is in July, so my next update will probably be then unless something amazingly exciting happens before then !

Unit 8 

Thanks for reading

Lauren :)

PS. OUR BADGES HAVE ARRIVED ! These are exclusive to Unit 8  so you can't find them anywhere else , if you'd like one, they are £2 + PP, so let me know. This is one of the ways I am fundraising so I'd love any support.

BUY BADGES PLEASE 

PPS. TICKETS FOR THE QUIZ ARE ON SALE ! Tickets for the Chiltern North quiz are available now, they are £11.50 and include a fish and chips dinner. The quiz is on 13th September at Great Missenden Memorial Hall, there will be a raffle and bar. Contact me if you would like some:)

       

418 days to go: Fundraising

Hello Everybody

Recently, writing blog posts has been bottom of my list of priorities because of exams and holidays , but I'm back and, hopefully, better than ever!

This post is just a round up of whats been going on regarding Jamboree in the last couple of months.